ACLU AT A GLANCE
Facts About the ACLU
The ACLU has staffed offices in all 50
states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C.
The ACLU employs over 240 staff
attorneys, who are supported by thousands
of volunteer attorneys across the country.
The national office of the ACLU is engaged
in 270 cases at any one time; combined
with affiliate cases, the ACLU is involved in
approximately 2000 cases.
No other nongovernmental organization
participates in as many Supreme Court
cases as the ACLU—25 percent of this
term’s cases, in fact.
The ACLU includes a lobbying arm
consisting of a 37-member team of
lobbyists and communications experts.
The ACLU has more than 500,000
members and supporters, 780,000 online
activists, and 800,000 social media
followers.
The ACLU website is a major informational
resource, getting 38,000 visits and 75,000
page views a day, as well as 11,000 visits
per day to our blog.
The national office has a total of 330
employees. Including affiliate offices, the
overall organization has approximately
1,000 employees.
The ACLU Foundation is in the 1 percent of
charities receiving at least 10 consecutive
4-star ratings from Charity Navigator.
The ACLU Foundation meets the highest
standards of the Wise Giving Alliance of the
Better Business Bureau, including its 20
Standards of Accountability.
The American Civil
Liberties Union
The ACLU is our nation’s guardian of liberty.
For nearly a century, the ACLU has been at the
forefront of virtually every major battle for civil
liberties and equal justice in this country. Principled and nonpartisan,
the ACLU has offices in all
50 states, Puerto Rico, and
Washington, D.C., and brings
together the country’s largest team of public interest
lawyers, lobbyists, communication strategists, and
members and activists to
advance equality, fairness,
and freedom, especially for
the most vulnerable in our
society.
Combining litigation with
public education, media
outreach, advocacy, and
lobbying, the ACLU works at
the local, state, and federal
levels to effect change in the
courts and legislatures, as
well as in the court of public
opinion. The ACLU tackles a
vast array of issues, including national security and
human rights; free speech;
reproductive freedom;
women’s rights; separation
of church and state; racial
justice; equality for lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender people; voting rights;
immigrants’ rights; criminal
justice reform; and ending
the death penalty. The ACLU
has participated in more
cases at the U.S. Supreme
Court than any other nongovernmental organization.
Some Highlights
1920 Palmer Raids
In its first year, the
ACLU championed the targets of Attorney
General A. Mitchell Palmer, including
politically radical immigrants. We also
supported the right of trade unionists to
hold meetings and organize, and secured
the release of hundreds of activists
imprisoned for their antiwar activities.
1925 The Scopes Case
When biology
teacher John T. Scopes was charged with
violating a Tennessee ban on the teaching
of evolution, the ACLU was there and
secured celebrated attorney Clarence
Darrow for his defense.
1942 Fighting the Internment of Japanese
Americans
The ACLU stood almost alone
in denouncing the federal government’s
internment of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps.
1954 Brown v. Board of Education
The
ACLU, having joined the NAACP in the
legal battle for equal education, celebrated
a major victory when the U.S. Supreme
Court declared that racially segregated
schools were in violation of the Fourteenth
Amendment.
1969 Protecting Free Speech
In Tinker v.
Des Moines, the ACLU won a major
Supreme Court victory on behalf of public
school students suspended for wearing
black armbands in protest of the Vietnam
War, a major First Amendment victory.
1973 Reproductive Rights
After decades
of struggle, the Supreme Court held—in
Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton—that the
constitutional right to privacy encompasses
a woman’s right to decide whether she
will terminate or continue a pregnancy.
But the fight still continues and the ACLU
struggles to protect women’s right to
reproductive choice.
1978 Free Speech in Skokie
The ACLU
took a controversial stand for free speech
by defending a Nazi group that wanted to
march through the Chicago suburb of
Skokie—where many Holocaust survivors
lived. The notoriety of the case cost the
ACLU dearly as members left in droves,
but to many it was our finest hour and has
come to represent our unwavering
commitment to principle.
1981 Creationism in Arkansas
Fifty-six
years after the Scopes trial, the ACLU
challenged an Arkansas statute requiring
that the biblical story of creation be taught
as a “scientific alternative” to the theory of
evolution. A federal court found the
statute, which fundamentalists saw as a
model for other states, unconstitutional.
That fight continues today as we take on
the “intelligent design” movement with
cases like our 2005 victory in Dover,
Pennsylvania.
1997 Internet Free Speech
In ACLU v.
Reno, the Supreme Court struck down the
1996 Communications Decency act, which
censored the Internet by broadly banning
“indecent” speech. Since then, Congress
has passed numerous versions of the
Child Online Protection Act, a federal law
that would criminalize constitutionally
protected speech on the Internet. Each
time the law has been challenged by the
ACLU and declared unconstitutional.
2001 to Present Keeping America Safe
and Free
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks,
the ACLU has been working vigorously to
oppose policies that sacrifice our fundamental freedoms in the name of national
security. From working to fix the Patriot Act
to challenging the government’s warrantless spying to demanding full accountability
from those who authorized or condoned
torture, our advocates are working to
restore fundamental freedoms lost as a
result of the Bush administration policies
that expanded the government’s power to
invade privacy, imprison people without
due process, conduct torture, and punish
dissent.
2003 Equal Treatment for Lesbians and
Gay Men
In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme
Court accepted the ACLU’s argument that
the court had been wrong when it ruled in
Bowers v. Hardwick that the right to privacy
did not cover lesbian and gay relationships.
It struck down a Texas law that made
same-sex intimacy a crime, expanding
the privacy rights of all Americans and
promoting the right of lesbians and gay
men to equality.
2005 Keeping Religion Out of the Science
Classroom
In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area
School District, the ACLU represented a
group of parents who challenged a public
school district requirement for teachers to
present so-called “intelligent design” as
an alternative to evolution in high school
biology classes. In a decision that
garnered nationwide attention, a district
judge ruled that “intelligent design” is
not science and teaching it violated the
Establishment Clause of the First
Amendment.
2009 Protecting the Right to Privacy
In
Safford Unified School District v. Redding,
the court ruled that school officials
violated the constitutional rights of a
13-year-old Arizona girl when they strip
searched her based on a classmate’s
uncorroborated accusation.
2013 Striking Down Human Gene Patents
In a huge victory for women’s health and
scientific research, the Supreme Court
unanimously invalidated patents on two
human genes associated with breast and
ovarian cancer in Association for Molecular
Pathology v. Myriad Genetics. In doing so,
the Court rejected the idea that private
companies can own a piece of our DNA,
overturning a 30-year practice of the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office of patenting
human genes.
2013 Challenging DOMA On behalf of
our client Edie Windsor, the ACLU won a
Supreme Court ruling that the Defense of
Marriage Act (DOMA) violates the equal
protection guarantee of the U.S. Constitution because it denies married same-sex
couples the federal benefits available to
other married couples.
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